


A Light In Your Eyes

by luninosity



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Bottom James, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Fluff and Angst, I swear those tags make sense when you read it, Intoxication, Love Confessions, M/M, Morning After, Morning Sex, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:49:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael taking care of James, Michael enjoying virgin-with-men James, intoxication and someone slipping James drugs at a club, oral sex, dirty talk and dubious consent, mornings-after, enthusiastic consent for the second round, finally-spoken I-love-yous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. night

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [是夜](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2007078) by [viciousmomo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/viciousmomo/pseuds/viciousmomo)
  * Inspired by [This Fire Rising](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138993) by [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity). 



> Warnings: Lots of sex. ALL the sex. Slightly dubcon sex (oral and hands) in the first half, with intoxicated!James and Michael “helping” him with some things, but James does want to, and the morning-after sex is fully consensual.
> 
> The first half of this was the original version of This Fire Rising, which I started writing down just to get out of my head, and then Certain People encouraged me to post it, so...here you go. Thanks, guys.
> 
> Title from Flyleaf’s “Light In Your Eyes.”

A nightclub. They were at a nightclub. And not even a particularly nice nightclub. Dark, crowded, seedy. Noise thumped out from the speakers, some supposedly danceable remix of Toto’s “Rosanna” that had Michael gritting his teeth. He actually _liked_ Toto’s “Rosanna.”  
  
The nightclub hadn’t been his idea. Hugh Jackman had said, at the end of the week’s shooting, that he missed dancing; and Ian and Patrick had looked delighted, and then James had been on board, and _then_ everyone else had been in, because James excited about anything was irresistible. Michael knew that better than anyone, Michael knew that in his bones and in his heart, because his heart couldn’t resist James at all.  
  
All I wanna do in the middle of the evening is hold you tight, the song announced tactlessly. Colorful lights wobbled over the packed Vancouver dance-floor.   
  
Michael finished his beer. One long sip. Shut his eyes, shook his head, tried to be sober.  
  
James bounced back to his side, carrying shot glasses filled with violently pink liquid. “Here!”  
  
“Do you even know what that is?”  
  
“Mostly vodka?”  
  
“James…”  
  
“Oh, come on, it’s been ages. We’ve got a day off tomorrow. And before you say anything, yes, I am aware of my own alcohol tolerance.” And, in defiance of said admittedly low tolerance, James finished off his own shot, and eyed Michael’s. “I never really did the club thing, y’know—I’d’ve been at home reading _Dune_ or something—but this is kind of fun, isn’t it? People keep asking me to dance.”  
  
Michael picked up the shot and took it, mostly to keep James from drinking any more. Besides, the alcohol might distract his brain from the thought of James dancing with other people.  
  
James slid into the booth beside him. His thigh was warm against Michael’s leg. All of him, in fact, was warm; and pink-cheeked and lovely and just the right height to be tucked in under Michael’s arm, if he leaned over, if James leaned in, if James looked up with those tipsy-ocean eyes and parted lips, just like that…  
  
Michael sat up. Kicked himself in the shin. Deliberately.  
  
James was beautiful and generous to a fault and the best person Michael’d ever, ever known, the person who baked cakes for every cast and crew birthday and looked at all his fellow actors as if they were the most interesting people on the planet; James smiled at journalists and fans and got them all to feel, just for an instant, as if they were special and amazing and wonderful just for being there, and made the world brighter with every big expansive inclusive hand-gesture or head-tilt or wave. James told astoundingly dirty jokes that somehow sounded only adorable in that accent, and talked Michael into stealing directorial golf-carts, and loved fast cars and motorbikes and Star Trek and chocolate-chip-pumpkin scones.  
  
James was his friend. And Michael could never, ever, look over and say, “James, I’m in love with you,” because as far as he could tell James wasn’t in love with anybody and if those words got spoken they could never be unsaid.   
  
James would be kind. James was always kind. But that easy grin, the hand that sometimes landed carelessly on Michael’s back, the way James leaned into him during interviews and collapsed onto his shoulder in laughter at his own terrible jokes…  
  
Michael knew he was a coward. He’d accepted that. He couldn’t accept the thought of losing James. And he was an actor, and a good one. So he acted. He acted like a man who wasn’t in love with his best friend. As if the sunshine didn’t come out, for him, whenever James walked into a room.  
  
“You could dance with me,” James said, all sparkling eyes and increasingly intoxicated pixie-height exuberance. “Then people’d stop asking. The other people, I mean. Because I want to dance with you.”  
  
All I wanna tell you is, now you’ll never ever have to compromise, cooed the song. Never thought that losing you could ever hurt so bad…  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not? I know you dance. I’ve seen you dance. Please?”  
  
Why not was because he couldn’t get on a dance floor with James. Couldn’t touch James, hold James, and not _want_ James. It’d be obvious to everyone. It’d be the end of his heart. Shattered, just like that. In pieces on a grimy Canadian nightclub floor.  
  
It was too much. He was drowning. And those blue eyes were so close, so insistent, so bright in the dimness.   
  
So _drunk_. Christ. James had to be two-and-a-half sheets to the wind to ask Michael to dance. He wanted to scream.  
  
“No,” he said again. “I think—are you drinking Ian’s strawberry daiquiri? Stop that—I should go. Back. To the hotel.”  
  
James set down the daiquiri and blinked at him. “You want to leave? Now?”  
  
“I just sort of…I’m not feeling…”  
  
“Are you all right?” Complete concern; tipsy, yes, but real worry in sapphire eyes. Sincerity bronzed by Highland velvet. “Is there anything I can do? D’you want company? I’d not mind leaving, I could come back to the hotel with you and—”  
  
“No!” That might finally make his heart implode. James coming back to his room, tucking him into bed, bringing him water. Hell.  
  
The bottomless ocean depths now looked wounded. Bruises on the sea-floor. Cracks opening up. But all James said was, “If you don’t want me I can get you Ian or someone, but at least if you’re not okay let me help you get back to the hotel?”  
  
“You don’t have to—you’re not even sober. Fuck. James, don’t worry about it, okay? Never mind. I’m fine.”  
  
“You’re not having fun.” James considered him for a moment, head tipped perceptively to one side. “How can I help?”  
  
“You can’t.” And then, horrified, he realized how that must’ve sounded; how those words, skewed by his own drinks of the evening and his ongoing heartbreak, had come out.  
  
The expression in blue eyes was one Michael’d never seen before. It went through him like an ice-spear. Evisceration.  
  
“James, I didn’t—that’s not what I—oh, fuck, _fuck_. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”  
  
“It’s okay,” James said, still pale and very calm, “I’ll just, um, go. Over there. Away. But…sorry…I might send Hugh to check on you? Because someone should? And I won’t ask you to dance with me again. I only thought maybe—never mind, not important, I’m going, I’m sorry.” And then he _was_ going. Graceful and abrupt as a vanishing dream, slipping out of the booth, mingling with the crowd, lost behind taller bodies.  
  
“Wait—” Michael said, and tripped over the table trying to stand up. James was out of sight already.  
  
He swore out loud. Multiple languages. The woman at the booth behind him looked at him in shock. Her friend applauded.  
  
He made it to the edge of the dance-floor and stood there desperately. No sign of James. No alcohol-flushed night-sky eyes anywhere.  
  
There was a very Australian throat-clearing at his shoulder. “So, James seems to think you need some company?”  
  
“You saw him? Where is he?”  
  
“Drinking his body weight in purple vodka? I didn’t know it came in those colors.” Hugh looked him up and down. “He found me at the bar. And then said yes when someone asked him to dance, so I’m guessing he’s somewhere out there, and you’re a moron. Have a martini.”  
  
“I think,” Michael said, and drank half the glass without tasting it, “I’ve just fucked everything up. Ever.”  
  
“Ever? Tall order, mate.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Is that why you’re not dancing with him? He’s in love with you, you know.”  
  
Michael tried to inhale alcohol. This maneuver ended with Hugh thumping him gleefully on the back. “He’s not—he isn’t—he never said—”  
  
“And you did?” Hugh snorted. “I was there when he said he was going to ask you to dance. Wouldn’t’ve guessed someone who tells those jokes about Superman’s sex life could blush like that, but there y’go. He’s adorable.”  
  
“He…is, yes…he actually meant to…ask me to…”  
  
“He said he’d never been in love with a man before, and he wasn’t sure how to even ask you, and Ian told him to just walk up to you and do something that’d probably get you both arrested, and I’m guessing he didn’t do that, but you turned him down anyway, ’cause you’re an idiot. If I wasn’t married, which I very am, and if he wanted me, I’d be sayin’ yes to every word on his lips.”  
  
“Oh god,” Michael said, helplessly.   
  
“Yep, divine intervention sounds about right.” Hugh patted his shoulder. “He’ll probably forgive you. He’s a good guy.” In that faded Australian-hillside voice, the _probably_ sounded almost believable.  
  
“I’m an idiot.”  
  
“Thought I just said that. He still loves you.”   
  
Meet you all the way, sang the chorus, over the thump of Michael’s poor confused heart, trying to break from shock and joy and despair. All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes…  
  
The dance remix thumped, too. Bass. Heavy speakers. Electronics. He scanned the writhing bodies for pocket-sized loveliness, giddy hair, unmissable eyes.  
  
Hugh nudged him. “There. Huh.”  
  
James. Dancing with someone Michael didn’t know, someone tall and blond and slim, someone leaning down and smiling at whatever words’d just been said. James put his head on one side, and moved just enough that Michael couldn’t see his face.  
  
“He’s good,” Hugh observed. “And I know about good dancing.”  
  
James _was_ good. Yoga-flexible and confident and fluid, hips and shoulders carrying the rhythm, all compact energy and curving invitation. More than one person in the crowd was eying him with admiration.  
  
“Didn’t know he could dance.” Hugh downed his own martini. “Course, I didn’t know he was into men, either, but they’re all going to, after tonight.” A wave at the dance-floor, the other patrons, the certain presence of cameras. “You might want to see whether he’d still come home with you, and not some random guy who picked him up at a club. Just sayin’.”  
  
James moved again and Michael could see him, blue button-down shirt coming undone, a gleam of sweat catching the neon lights at his collarbone, hair sticking to his face, laughing and not objecting as the man’s hand slid along his waist, pulling him closer, possessive…  
  
Michael looked away. Downed the last of his martini in silence. Felt as if a hand had reached into his chest, closed around his heart, and squeezed.  
  
He looked back at James, because he couldn’t help it.  
  
James was in the other man’s embrace now, bodies aligned, moving to the music; James moved like everyone’s fantasy, Michael thought savagely, sheer sensual abandon, the promise of muscles and thighs and cadence that would carry over from the dance-floor, drumbeats and pulse-beats in a bed, under the sheets. His hand hurt. He noticed, with a lack of surprise, that his fingers’d gone white, gripping the empty martini glass.  
  
The man trailed fingers across James’s cheek, over bright lips. Left them there, resting, a sign of proprietorship, control. James stumbled slightly, losing grace for just a second; Michael couldn’t see his eyes, and didn’t want to, didn’t want to know, couldn’t see James breathless and surrendering to some stranger in a club.   
  
He took a step toward the dance-floor. Tried to think of what he might say, pulling James away, a hand on that shoulder, a hope caught in his throat: please don’t throw yourself away on someone you’ve only just met, you said you’d never wanted another man before and what if he’s cruel to you, I know I’m not good enough and I’ve already hurt you but I promise to do better, if you somehow miraculously still want me I’ll do anything for you and I don’t want your first time to be some drunken fumbling with someone who might not care about your comfort, I’d make sure you were sober and loving every minute of it and I love you.  
  
He bit his own lip so hard he tasted blood, and cursed, and pressed his tongue against the wound until it stung, letting pain-spots splash behind closed eyes.   
  
When he opened them, his gaze was drawn to James as magnetically as ever. James and the other man were still on the dance floor, still entwined, and the blond man still had that hungry expression, gazing down at the gloriousness in his arms. That was the same. But…  
  
…but it wasn’t. Not quite.  
  
James wasn’t moving right. All the joyous energy was gone; he seemed to be barely on his feet, swaying, off-balance. Even as Michael watched, his legs wobbled; the blond man laughed, gathered him closer, caught him when James nearly fell.  
  
James’s head lolled to one side. A hand in his hair dragged him upright, a kiss bruised those lips, and James didn’t kiss back, James looked hardly awake, going limp, unresisting—  
  
Wrong, everything was wrong, and Michael plunged across the dance floor, shoving startled patrons out of the way with reckless haste. Several of them moved just looking at his face.  
  
He pushed his way to James’s side, got hands on his shoulders, tugged him away. James’s legs gave way; Michael flung arms around him, frantic. James laughed, soft and sweet and entirely drugged and uncomprehending, and nuzzled his face into Michael’s chest.  
  
Christ. His heart pounded. Rage and fear. He wondered whether James could hear it, feel it, being cradled against him.  
  
“James,” he said, voice steady with herculean effort, “we’re leaving now,” and James blinked up at him, eyes unfocused, black pools surrounded by a thin fragile ring of blue. “You’re very strong…oh, and warm. Do you like being warm?”  
  
Oh god. He snapped his gaze up; the blond-haired man had started to slip away, obviously not wanting a fight, a scene, any of the grievous bodily harm Michael was planning to visit upon him.   
  
“You. Stop.”  
  
“Who, me?” Eyebrows arched at him. “If you wanted him, you could’ve had him.”  
  
“I’m going to kill you,” Michael said, very factually, “but first you’re going to tell me what you gave him.” James sighed, shivered, tried to wrap himself around Michael’s body heat, breathed softly against his neck. All of Michael’s skin prickled with awareness. He hated himself, and his instant arousal.  
  
Ian and Patrick had materialized in the crowd, and comprehended the scene with hardening eyes, which they turned on all the sleek blond hair. Ian reached out and took one of the man’s arms; Patrick took the other.   
  
“It’ll wear off—” The man now seemed a bit panicked. “He didn’t seem to mind—he wanted it—”  
  
“He took it because you had a hand over his mouth!” This was a guess, but, from the reaction, an accurate one. “What was it?”  
  
“It’ll just make him happy, it won’t hurt him—”  
  
James chose this moment to lose balance completely, dead weight in Michael’s arms, collapsing against him; Michael staggered, adjusted his grip, fought to keep them vertical. “James! Talk to me!”  
  
“Mmm…”  
  
“James, please!”  
  
“Take him home,” Patrick said, “we’ll deal with this,” and from the look in those steel-cold eyes, Michael knew that this _would_ be dealt with.  
  
He held James up. Attempted to navigate them through the crowds toward the door. James murmured something unintelligible, and rested his head on Michael’s shoulder.  
  
“James,” Michael tried again, frantic, “say something. Talk to me. Tell me you’re here.”  
  
“I’m here…you’re here, too…you have marvelous eyes…” James gazed at him, all beautiful drug-clouded intentness. “You look worried. Why’re you worried?”  
  
“Christ. James. Listen. It’s Michael. Do you recognize me? Do you remember who I am?”  
  
“Michael,” James said, but thoughtfully, as if tasting the name on his tongue. “Are you coming home with me?”  
  
“Oh, fuck—oh, James, no. No, please.” He meant, no, this isn’t happening, no, make it not be true, let him recognize me, let him look up with those too-blue eyes and know who I am; but James plainly heard the desperation differently.  
  
“You’re not coming home with me? Are we…I thought…” Too easy, the hurt in that intoxicated gaze, glittering with unguarded emotion. “You don’t want me?” And one hand ran over Michael’s chest, clumsy but seductive even so, oddly innocent in the confusion of denial and desire. Michael bit his lip again; welcomed the pain.  
  
“Don’t,” James said, and even through whatever drug it’d been, James was still James, all kindness and concern and compassion, and the hand patted his shoulder awkwardly, offering comfort. “Don’t look worried. Please. It’s fine. You don’t have to want me, it’s fine, it’s not your fault. Okay?”  
  
“Christ,” Michael said again, afraid he was going to cry. Right there in the doorway of a bustling nightclub, holding James, surrounded by curious glances, his heart splintering.  
  
“It’s not your fault,” James said again, impossibly earnest and lovely, “no one really properly wants me, you see, Michael doesn’t—not you Michael, the other Michael, he has eyes like yours but fewer lines…” One fingertip, with astonishing accuracy under the circumstances, tapped directly between his eyebrows. “He’s always happy. Makes me want to smile. He wouldn’t be staring at me, though. Wouldn’t be looking at me, really. I don’t think he likes looking at me.”  
  
But, Michael said, in his head, not out loud only because he was so very much in shock, but I do, I’m always looking at you, I’m trying not to be always looking at you, because if you ever saw me looking you’d know I’m forever entirely yours.   
  
“Anyway,” James concluded, “you’re beautiful and you shouldn’t be sad,” and then went utterly limp in Michael’s arms, sliding toward the ground, eyes drifting shut.  
  
 _“James!”_  
  
“ ’m awake…the floor’s not very friendly, is it…to be fair, it gets walked on by a lot of people…sorry, floor…”  
  
“Oh god,” Michael said, and got James into a cab, and held him upright—he was afraid that if James collapsed he might not be able to breathe or might choke or something even worse, and that might be overreacting a bit but Michael couldn’t help picturing it and being terrified—and got him into the hotel and up the elevator and to the room.  
  
He knew which room it was, because it was the one next to his. James had opened the connecting door between them the first night and yelled, “Come watch _Wrath of Khan_ with me!” and Michael’d called back “Pick something I actually know!” and then had come over anyway and stretched out on the bed with James and blankets and cinnamon-sugar biscuits and a six-pack of lager and been utterly purely content, in that moment, with his life.  
  
They’d left the door open. Just made sense, really. They had to be on set at roughly the same times, and they could run lines together, and James could wander over and borrow his toothpaste, and Michael could pretend he’d run out of shampoo just to make his hair smell like James’s crisp cool apple scent all day and then try not to forget his cues because of persistent and detailed mental images of James in the shower.  
  
In light of current revelations, he would’ve wondered whether James popping over clad in only a towel and asking very seriously whether Michael would rather be a merman or a selkie might’ve been an attempt at gauging his reaction to the towel. Except he didn’t have room to wonder, because every bit of his brain was occupied with panic.  
  
He eased James down onto the bed, carefully. James sighed, head falling into the pillows, eyes closing; he seemed even smaller than usual, tiny messy-haired person in the oversized fluff, and Michael’s heart ached.  
  
“Sit up,” he said, and got water from the mini-fridge, and put a hand behind James’s head when it became clear that James couldn’t manage it on his own. “Drink. Just so you know, I’m about one panic attack away from taking you to the closest hospital. Open your eyes.”  
  
James blinked at him.   
  
“Right,” Michael said, “just so we’re, y’know, clear,” and tipped more water into his mouth. A bit trickled out over wet lips; pouring too fast, and James wasn’t all that coordinated. The drops shone on his mouth. His chin. Michael bit back a whimper. “…sorry. Here.”  
  
He swiped his thumb over soft skin, collecting stray droplets. An indulgence, and he knew it was; but he couldn’t not. And James leaned into his hand, nuzzling, enjoying the caress.  
  
“You feel good. And warm. Did I say warm?” The words were all tangled up in drugs and liqueur and exaggerated bagpipe melodies, blurring together; but Michael had a lot of experience listening to James talk, because he was always listening whenever James talked, and he was pretty sure he’d got it right.  
  
“You did. How’re you feeling? Can you look at me?” He waved a hand in front of dark eyes, all black drowning the blue. Watched James try to focus. Talking was a good sign, wasn’t it? Forming sentences?  
  
“Dizzy.” James couldn’t seem to follow his finger. “Sort of spinning…but I like it…I feel…everything feels…sparkly. Glowing. You’re glowing. Is that fun?”  
  
“I…seriously? Um. Sure. Yes. Very fun. James…I might need to call someone…drink more water first.”  
  
“I think we’re in my bed,” James informed him, and accepted the water when Michael held it to his lips. “I have too many clothes on to be in bed.”  
  
Michael took the water away, stared at the ceiling, and counted to ten, very slowly, in English, and in German, and in French.   
  
“Do you want me to— _what are you doing?”_  
  
What James was doing was lying on the bed, the hand that’d been flopped across his stomach now idly stroking over the very evident bulge in his jeans, rubbing lazily. His eyes were half-closed, lips parted in enjoyment. Michael’s heart skipped a beat. And then sped up thunderously.  
  
James opened enormous eyes at him, lost in sensation, in drugs, in pleasure. “Feels good.”  
  
“James…you…are you sure you should…that’s not…” His brain had all but shut down. James. Aroused. Teasing himself. In bed.  
  
It was so many of his fantasies, and so exactly the opposite of them, all at once. So wrong.  
  
“James,” he tried, “you wouldn’t…you don’t…want that…”  
  
“But I like it,” James said, plaintive and uncomprehending, lips all wet with the water Michael’d just been making him drink, and didn’t pause.   
  
“I…” He lost track of what he was saying, as James shifted hips, arched into his own hand, made a sound that would’ve made a porn star proud. Oh god. Oh god, James wasn’t going to stop, was stroking relentlessly at his own cock, palming himself through jeans, eyes vague and far-off and dreamy, simply seeking pleasure now, regardless of Michael’s presence…  
  
If he panicked and left, James would be alone. Alone, and under the influence, and clearly liable to do anything. He couldn’t leave.  
  
He couldn’t stay and _not_ watch. He was only human. Helpless.  
  
James moaned softly, and slow fingers fumbled at the fastenings of his jeans, the top button, the zip. He couldn’t seem to make them work; Michael’s mouth was bone-dry.  
  
James let out a little whimper of frustration and looked right at him, and his resistance crumbled.   
  
“Okay,” he said, and inched a bit closer on the bed. “Okay…you…would you like…sort of…some help with that?”  
  
He sounded like the worst adult-film actor ever. He cringed. But James didn’t seem to mind, only nodded, with huge eyes.  
  
“Okay,” Michael said again, and eased open the jeans, hoping James didn’t notice his hands shaking. “Lift your hips.” James stared at him for a second, and then seemed to get it, rolling hips and letting Michael slide clothing out of the way, lifting his arms docilely for Michael to strip off his shirt.  
  
Naked. James was naked. He sat there on the fluffy bed for a moment trying to believe it.  
  
James naked was purely beautiful. Pale skin, elegant as antique mapping linen; the maps were drawn with territories of freckles, intricate domains of cinnamon and nutmeg and gold-dust, exotic spices and undiscovered countries. Curves and valleys in the line of his hips, the slim waist; the brilliant paradox of strength, conquering muscles in broad shoulders and runner’s legs. Michael’d imagined, many times—and he’d seen quite a lot of James in wardrobe trailers, but only in glimpses and flashes and hope—but the reality left him speechless, literally.  
  
James _was_ beautiful everywhere. That included the place Michael’s gaze had fallen, the stiff flushed line of his cock, heavy and thick and standing up straight from the nest of springy dark curls. James’s hand had drifted there again, drawing Michael’s eye; his cock was already visibly wet, hungry slit dripping with want, but the strokes were uncoordinated, disoriented, dazed.  
  
James sighed again, and shifted against the sheets, obviously needing more, not quite getting it.  
  
Michael took a deep breath, and stepped off the cliff.   
  
He leaned in for the first kiss cautiously, brushing their lips together. James made a happy little sound and opened his mouth, an invitation.  
  
Michael whispered, against those lips, “I want to help, James, I don’t want to hurt you,” and James snuck the tip of his tongue out shyly and teased him in reply, innocent and tempting as sin, and Michael groaned out loud and pulled him closer, deeper, plundering that mouth the way he’d always wanted to, tasting every millimeter of him, knowing that he’d forever have the flavor of James branded into his lips, his heart.  
  
James opened up for him readily, no protest at all, eyes twilight-blue and brilliant, body wonderfully responsive, moving toward his naturally as a flower. Michael pressed kisses into the line of his throat, down his chest, along one arm, the soft paler skin at the inside of his elbow. Breathed, “I’m helping you, that’s all, you need this,” and James whimpered and reached for him, but could only manage lightly grazing his arm.  
  
Michael eased him flat on the bed, bent down, licked gently over one peaked nipple; James gasped and shivered, so he did it again, more roughly.   
  
“Yes,” James moaned, voice practically a purr, all shredded Scottish velvet, “yes.”  
  
“Still helping,” Michael whispered, “for you, making you feel better, I promise,” and slid his hand over the enticing jut of a hip, chasing freckles, and closed it around the luscious hardness of James’s cock.  
  
The curve of it fit his hand perfectly. Flawless. Made for him.  
  
James gave a little choked cry, and his hips jerked upwards. His eyes were half-lidded, inarticulate, needing.  
  
“You like this?” He stroked, once, twice, leisurely; James let out that tiny sobbing sound again. “You feel good, you said…does this feel good, too? When I touch you?”  
  
“Please…”  
  
“More?” He rubbed his thumb, methodically, over the leaking slit. Smeared the fluid over superheated skin, covering James in his own need. James was panting, swift little huffs of air, body collapsed into the bed except for the tension in his cock, his hips, where he was being touched. Michael walked the hand lower; toyed with the weight of his balls, hanging there, tight and tantalizing and ready. Caressed him, cradled him, squeezed just enough to be on the right side of hurt, and James cried out, hips lifting from the bed.  
  
“Oh, you like that?” He took James’s erection in hand again, strokes faster now, grip harder, watching the response. “You want me to be rough with you, to make you come…to use you…”  
  
James whimpered, beyond words, head rolling across the pillows.   
  
“I can do this for you,” Michael told him, and then, because those spectacular sapphire eyes were shut, because James wouldn’t remember any of this, because he had to say it, “I want to, James, I want you, I always have, please don’t hate me, I love you.”  
  
Might’ve been his imagination, but there seemed to be a pause, after that, before James moaned again.  
  
James wouldn’t remember. James was drugged and incoherent and desperate, and Michael shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be taking advantage, shouldn’t be storing every sound and every sensation away for future fantasies, because James couldn’t say yes, didn’t know what was happening, only needed release.  
  
He hated himself a little, but he couldn’t walk away and leave James alone and hurting and thinking himself unwanted. He wasn’t that person.  
  
He said, quietly, wholeheartedly, again, “I love you, and I know you won’t hear me—you don’t even know who I am, right now—” He had to pause, to get his heart back under control.  
  
“—but I want you to know I want you.” He leaned down, kissed parted lips, touched one cheek and got James to look as closely as possible into his eyes. “I mean that. You’re perfect. I’m Michael and you’re James and I love you.”  
  
James blinked. Twice. Lay there gazing at him, breathing softly, eyes slowly drifting out of focus.  
  
“Okay,” Michael said, and wrapped his hand more firmly around that luscious iron-hot length, and began working him in earnest, steady rhythm, tightness, that stroke over the tip at the end that made James groan and shudder and tense underneath him, close.  
  
One more, firm and ungentle, and James gasped and went rigid, and Michael watched in awe as pulse after pulse of white liquid spilled from his cock, held in Michael’s fingers, spurting over all the twinkling freckles on that flat stomach and chest, messy, uninhibited, uncontrolled release.  
  
James shuddered one final time and relaxed, going limp with aftermath, but not completely; his body shivered and twitched when Michael drew a fingertip through the mess at his tip, trailing lines over too-sensitive skin. “Hmm,” Michael said, and lifted the finger and touched it to James’s mouth, making him taste himself; James accepted the invasion willingly, and licked the traces of his orgasm from Michael’s skin. Michael, in awe, did it again, holding the finger up for him, watching James’s tongue sweep dreamily over his hand.  
  
His own cock was rock-hard and aching, throbbing with denial. He pushed the heel of his other hand down against it, cruelly.  
  
James, naturally, noticed. Walked an unsteady hand to Michael’s hip, and tugged at his belt, a question.  
  
“No. No, listen, we took care of you, that was…that was the point…James, stop…”  
  
James didn’t seem inclined to listen, venturing the hand up under Michael’s shirt, flattening it against bare skin. The touch seared into his waist. Lightning under his skin.  
  
“James,” he said, and his voice scraped across flayed-raw vocal cords, “no. Stop.”  
  
Amazingly, James did stop. Took the hand away. And then looked up at him with eyes like the collapse of the universe.  
  
“Oh, god. No, no, come on, it’s not that I don’t want you, I do want you, I—fuck. James, I can’t. I can’t—not with you like this, please—you aren’t hearing anything I’m saying. Christ.” He started to put his face in his hands. Couldn’t, because one of them was sticky.  
  
When he looked back over, James was looking away, very obviously trying not to show hurt.  
  
“Oh fuck,” Michael said, feeling thoroughly helpless, agony lacing his bones; and then he picked up James’s hand, took a deep breath, and set it on his extremely excited arousal, which jumped in response even through his jeans.  
  
James’s eyes lit up. As if that was everything he needed.   
  
“You’ve never even done this before,” Michael told him. “I want to—I wanted to—James, I swear I wouldn’t, I meant to make this good for you, your first—”  
  
“You,” James said, and curled fingers around his cock. “You made me happy. Your turn. Fair.”  
  
“I don’t know if I can—”  
  
“Michael,” James said, and Michael absolutely froze, even while his erection jumped in the loose grip of those freckled fingers. James had said his name.  
  
“You—are you—you remember who I—”  
  
“Mmm. We’re in my bed and you’re taking care of me. You said you would…”  
  
“Always,” Michael promised, shaky with relief, with elation, “always, yes, I’m here, James…”  
  
“And you want me.” James lay there gazing up at him, fingers stroking aimlessly and clumsily along Michael’s length, over fabric. “Thought you didn’t…you said no…but you do…”  
  
“I do want you.” He wrapped his hand over James’s, squeezing firmly, making James feel it. “All of me wants you.” Cock, heart, body and soul. Every piece of him belonged to James.  
  
“So,” James murmured, drifting again, losing coherence. “Your turn. Michael. Please.”  
  
He could. He could, James was giving him permission, and he wanted to, so very badly—  
  
“Thought about you,” James mumbled, words slurring. “In the shower. Wanted to…find out what you’d taste like…I’ve never done that…never wanted to, except with you…want my mouth on you, to feel you…”  
  
Michael clamped his hand down hard around the base of his cock, and somehow managed to _not_ come at the presence of those words in his life.  
  
“You,” he got out, panting—the self-restraint’d physically _hurt_ —“you want me to—James, can I—?”  
  
James gazed at him through drowsy eyes, and swiped pink tongue across ready lips, leaving them wet and parted and beckoning. Waited.  
  
“All right,” Michael said, and pulled his shirt off, and then everything else, while James watched with half-open eyes from the bed.  
  
He pushed into that welcoming mouth slowly, kneeling over James’s face, taking his time. He knew he was large; James was trusting and compliant, not resisting at all, but Michael couldn’t hurt him, and so made the glide very slow.  
  
James took him all in, eyes half-shut with pleasure. Tried to lick at him, to suck at him; couldn’t move much, and Michael noticed with thrilled incredulousness the pleased little jerk of hips at that realization.  
  
“You like this,” he observed, tone hushed with wonder, “you like being fucked, you like the idea that I can do anything to you, anything at all,” and he knew it wasn’t real, it was James influenced and drugged and incoherent with need, but it felt real, felt genuine, and James’s throat worked around him, swallowing, tightening, pulling him deeper.  
  
“I’m not going to fuck you,” he promised, “not tonight, not like this, but I can do this,” and he pulled back and thrust in again on James’s deprived cry, cutting off the sound; James struggled for a moment, but was too far gone to do anything but give in and accept the punishing thrusts, Michael plunging into his mouth, down his throat, using him, making him take all that length while James moaned and writhed deliriously beneath Michael’s weight.   
  
He could feel himself filling that elegant throat, could feel James fighting for air; but when he let up for a moment James whimpered and a hand flopped against the bed as if meaning to drag him back in.   
  
“You like that, too?” He wrapped his hand into James’s hair. Pulled his head up; thrust in deeper, knowing he’d be leaving bruises, hearing the rawness in that voice when James moaned. James let Michael hold him up, obedient, acquiescent; his head fell into Michael’s hand, and Michael cradled the back of his skull, pushed him down, kept those lips buried around his base, taking it all in. “Beautiful,” he said, and James quivered, reaction to the sound of his voice, to the praise.  
  
“So fucking beautiful,” Michael told him, “and so good at this, you’re so good, and you want it so much, don’t you? You want me to fuck you, god, James, you said you wanted it, you wanted to be on your knees with your lips wrapped around my cock, didn’t you?” He was shocked at himself, someplace deep inside—he’d never imagined saying those words to James, and certainly not for a first time, not when it should’ve been all tender loving exploration—but the words were there somehow. And James seemed to be enjoying them, if the sounds and movements and swelling thickness of his cock were any indication.  
  
Michael tightened his hand in all that hair. Whispered, “You’ve never done this for anyone else, and you never will, you’re mine, James, completely,” and James moaned, as much as he could with his mouth filled so thoroughly. “Look at you. You love it, don’t you, my cock in your mouth, my hands on you? You want to be used, you want to be a slut for me, James, because you are, and you know you are, you come when I touch you and you get off thinking of me in the shower and you knew what you were doing, touching yourself in bed with me there…”  
  
Christ. He heard himself with amazement. But James heard him too, and pale thighs spread and shifted against the bed, and when Michael paused to check, James’s arousal was jutting up against the flat silk of his stomach and dripping need over all the freckles. He had to smile, seeing that.  
  
James was utterly yielding in his hands, surrender total, movements scattered and unthinking, simple response to the use of his body. Michael held him in place; James struggled to breathe around the intruding length, eyes falling shut, and Michael felt himself abruptly teetering on the edge, that hot wet mouth and the workings of muscle around him. He stopped, pulled back, let his cock rest over spit-and-come-streaked lips, swollen and red.  
  
“James,” he said, “I’m going to come like this, on you, all over you, I want to fucking cover you with me, I want you,” and James, eyes fluttering open, licked the tip of his cock with distant dreamlike eagerness.  
  
Michael inhaled sharply, and only just got a hand around the base, steadying himself, and then he was coming, tipping over the edge, world fracturing into white and jagged brilliance. His come landed on James, everywhere: on that upturned face, long eyelashes, the bridge of his nose, abused lips and throat.  
  
James shivered, moving restlessly, breathless too; Michael, panting, touched his other cheek—one unsticky spot—and managed, “James, Christ, you’re so fucking beautiful, please,” and didn’t know what he was asking for.  
  
But James whispered, a mere exhale of sound, “Michael,” and Michael’s entire body snapped to attention, but the blue eyes were fluttering shut.   
  
His name. James had said his name. At that moment. James _knew_ him.  
  
“…James?”   
  
A moan, somewhere between unfulfilled and satisfied; Michael swung his gaze back down the length of that thoroughly defiled body, and almost laughed, airless, exultant, aching and exhausted, in love and wanting to weep.   
  
James was hard and ready, arousal stiff and flushed, body plainly loving the use. Even as Michael watched, his cock stirred, as if feeling the weight of caressing eyes. Again, then.  
  
He put his hand back in place. James sighed, as if waiting for exactly that, and pushed hips upward. “Not sore?” Michael murmured, not expecting a reply; that battered tartan voice whispered back, “Like stars,” and he froze in surprise.  
  
“…what?”  
  
“Stars.” James gazed up at him, languid, blurry. “Intense. But far away. That…”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, and stroked him again, and again, until James was half moaning and half sobbing and writhing at every teasing touch, delirious with pleasure and pain and ecstasy that had to be swirling into anguish, and James trembled and didn’t stop, and so Michael didn’t either, pushing him further, again and again. Into the heat of the stars.  
  
Eventually, after the fourth quivering peak—James cried out and curled in on himself, gasping, orgasm near dry and cock red and too sensitive under Michael’s hand—James fell asleep, and only whimpered something unintelligible when Michael stroked his hip. But it was real sleep, not the unconsciousness of drugs or alcohol, and he’d gotten James to drink more water; they would, he thought, be all right.  
  
He cleaned them up as best he could with warm wet towels—he wasn’t about to ask James to stand up and walk to the shower, and anyway his own legs felt awfully wobbly—and, after a moment’s thought, scooped all the freckles into his arms and carried James through the connecting door and into his own bed, where the sheets were clean and undefiled, and folded arms and legs around that smaller frame, and let himself sleep, too, at last.

 


	2. morning

He woke to misty sunlight spilling through the crack in the curtains and blue eyes regarding him thoughtfully from inches away. James hadn’t moved in the night, had stayed put in Michael’s arms, and the ridiculous Toto song leapt into his head all over again: meet you all the way…  
  
He cleared his throat. Managed, “Are you…all right? How do you feel?”  
  
James made a wryly-amused-and-not-exactly-rueful face at him. Wriggled a hand up; tapped his throat. “I have an entirely new respect for porn stars. Though most of them aren’t trying to contend with something that size, first time out…”  
  
“I’m…sorry? You…” He hesitated. Couldn’t think of a tactful way to ask, you remember wanting to, yes? I didn’t take _that_ much advantage of you? Though of course he _had_. James hadn’t precisely been rational.  
  
“I’m all right.” James paused to swallow, experimentally. “I was thinking I might want to panic and be hideously embarrassed and hide under my bed, except I’m comfortable here. And I woke up with you holding on to me. Are you all right?”  
  
 _“Me?”_  
  
“Yes, you. I didn’t…” A hesitation, a blush; the embarrassment arriving after all. “You said…what you said…but I sort of made you…and you didn’t want to…”  
  
“James,” Michael attempted, flailing and out to sea, “you didn’t make me do anything—I did—I practically—I called you a—”  
  
“And I liked it,” James said, and then went scarlet everywhere and stopped talking, looking terrified. “Oh god. Michael, I’m so sorry. I made you have sex with me and you didn’t want—you kept trying to tell me no—and apparently I like—the things I like, that you said, that I wanted—oh, fuck—”  
  
“Wait,” Michael said, and then leaned forward and kissed him, interrupting all the anxious words.  
  
James was very still for a second—surprise—and then relaxed in his arms, parted those lips, and kissed him back, sunshine-drenched and laughing.  
  
Michael ran his tongue over soft skin, nibbled, tasted, plundered—James clearly enjoyed him being more forceful, opening up for the claiming, smiling when Michael bit down on his lower lip and then let him go with some reluctance, not wanting to hurt that mouth any more.  
  
“Oh,” James said, still smiling. “Oh. Okay. So…can I ask you something?”  
  
“Does it involve me having sex with you?”  
  
“Can I ask you two somethings?”  
  
“Of course.” He dropped a kiss on the bridge of that nose, right over the twin twinkling freckles, because he could. James blushed again.  
  
“When you…at the club…I asked you to dance with me. You said no.”  
  
“I couldn’t. I’d’ve ended up dragging you off to the hotel and having my way with you in the elevator.” He stroked a hand through happy dark hair. It looped around his fingers, holding on. “And you were…sort of…not sober? And I’m sorry. I should’ve said yes anyway. I mean—what happened, after…”  
  
“Not your fault.” James kissed him, this time, swift and self-assured. “I should’ve known better than to listen to Ian about getting drunk first. I’ve just never…I never wanted a man, I never wanted anyone, the way I wanted you. _Want_ you. Present tense. And I could never tell how you felt. But after a couple of drinks I just thought, fuck it, why not try, and if not, then at least I’d know. When I said I was all right, by the way, I meant I have the universe’s worst headache, but I think that’s only the hangover and the terrible Toto song in my head.”  
  
“I love you,” Michael said.  
  
James stared at him for a second, through the sunbeam.  
  
“I mean it. You said you couldn’t tell how I felt. I love you.”  
  
“Oh,” James said again, slowly, “I thought I remembered—you did say, last night, but I wasn’t sure that’d happened—and I love you, of course, I’m so fucking in love with you,” and pounced on his lips and kissed him breathless.  
  
“James,” Michael said, between kisses, trying to get his mouth on every single freckle and count them all with his tongue, “that other question—about sex—”  
  
“Absolutely yes.”  
  
“How sore are you? I mean—”  
  
“I’m not, not really.” James rolled them over, Michael on top, and arched up against him. Their bodies slid together; James’s arousal pressed into his. And Michael was the one who groaned, because James was beautiful and sober and wanting him and _here_ …  
  
“I do want you.” James sounded entertained. Michael wondered how much of that he’d inadvertently said aloud. “I want you to fuck me. To…do everything you said you’d do to me. Talk to me like that, again.”  
  
“I wanted it to be…sort of…nice. Your first.” He ran a hand over James’s left hip, memorizing freckles and curves with his skin. “You deserve that. Nice.”  
  
“Apparently,” James said, sounding unaccountably happy for someone who was technically a virgin in the area under discussion, “I don’t want nice. I want you to fuck me. And I get off on you telling me you’re going to. So…”  
  
“So,” Michael echoed promptly, because he knew a good cue when he heard one and he wasn’t going to worry about it if James wasn’t, “I’m going to fuck you, James. The way I wanted to last night. Hard, and fast, until you scream. I want to hear you scream for me, and you’ll love it when you do.”  
  
That mobile mouth formed an adorable soundless circle. Michael grinned. “That was what you wanted, then?”  
  
James nodded, having evidently forgotten how to talk; the nod was emphatic. Michael felt proprietarily smug about this.  
  
He slid off the bed. Grabbed the hotel lotion off the bathroom sink. Ran back. James had propped himself up on one elbow, shamelessly appreciating. “You’re marvelous. And I get to have that. Ah…not worried exactly, only curious, but…will it, y’know…fit?”  
  
Michael snorted with laughter. “I hope so. Though you’ll tell me if it’s hurting you. I mean…you are kind of a virgin, James.”  
  
“I am not!”  
  
“About this!”  
  
“Oh…fair enough. I assume you’ve got a plan. Does it involve your fingers?”  
  
“How do you even know—”  
  
“ _I_ have fingers.”  
  
Michael stood there beside the bed, bottle of lotion dangling from his hand, in utter delight. Just looking at James.  
  
“What,” James said, and then put both hands over his face, and then peeked at Michael through fingers, laughing, pink-cheeked, not exactly shy. “Is that not a thing? Because I liked it when I did it, but—”  
  
“It’s entirely a thing! And you’re fucking amazing. Would you…show me, sometime?”  
  
James dropped the hands to stare at him. Michael, who’d never exactly been turned on by untouched virgins, discovered that he could be incredibly unbelievably turned on by _James_ as a virgin, that astonishing brilliant combination of fearlessness and shockability.  
  
“You…want me to…”  
  
“I want you to show me what you’d do, how you’d open yourself up and slide your fingers inside, what you liked when you did it…you’ll do that for me. While I watch.”  
  
“Oh god,” James said, a little weakly. “Yes. Please. Now?”  
  
“No. Now I want to do that for you.” He punctuated that with a kiss, long and deep and meticulous in conquering every last little gasp and moan and tremble. James was breathless and wide-eyed and malleable when he finished. Michael had to kiss him once more, light and fleeting, for that.  
  
“Legs apart,” he said, and they fell obediently open, baring Scottish-fair thighs and dark intimate spaces for his perusal. He ran a hand along one of those thighs; James shivered, and licked parted lips, looking up at him.  
  
Michael considered this, and then observed, “So eager, aren’t you?” and heard the resultant tiny gasp with satisfaction. James did deserve nice, and he was going to be, despite the words; but James didn’t want him to hold back or be cautious. And the release was going to be _fun_.  
  
“You said you like it,” he mused, and brushed his thumb over James’s straining cock, too lightly to offer any sort of real friction, “when I talk to you…when I tell you what I want to do with you…and you know you want that, too, love. You want to be thoroughly ruined by me. My cock inside you, you taking it all, until you can’t walk, until I’m dripping out of you every time you move, and you’d love it, James.”  
  
James trembled, and nodded, eyes fixed on Michael’s hand, now teasing his cock with soft strokes, up and down.  
  
“So filthy, you are.” He let the hand slide lower, further back, tracing over vulnerable skin, slipping between the curves of that delectable backside. “No one’d ever guess that you were a virgin. Not you. Not the way you’re begging to be used.”  
  
The sound, then, was someplace between a gasp and a sob and a whispered “please;” Michael paused, leaned down, kissed a freckled hip. Whispered, “I love you, I’ll make this good, I promise,” falling out of role just enough: still them, together, and he’d never hurt James.  
  
James whispered back, “I know, I love you, I know,” and was smiling when Michael lifted his head. The sunbeam poured out from its curtain-crack and spilled light all around the room, over rumpled bedsheets and naked skin. It was smiling too.  
  
Lotion. His hand. The clean summery scent of green grass and cloudless skies; the hotel’d no doubt tried to pick a neutral scent, but grass would never be neutral again. He’d likely end up hard just walking through a park.  
  
Maybe he could have sex with James in a park. He pondered that idea for a while, and then set it aside and came back to the real thing.  
  
He pressed the first fingertip to furled muscle, gently. James sighed, and stretched legs further apart, inviting him in. So he accepted the invitation.  
  
“All right?”  
  
“Yes…” Softer, that dreamy note back in the Scottish hills: not drugs this time, but a simple sensual haze, as Michael’s finger slid in and out of his body. “You could do more…”  
  
“Oh, could I?” Two, then. Twisting, scissoring, stretching. Seeking; and finding.  
  
James gasped, a sudden broken inhale, overwhelmed by ecstasy. Michael watched his face. Stroked fingers right there, over that tingling bundle of nerves. Repeatedly. “Good?”  
  
“That—I can’t—oh _god_ —”  
  
“You can’t what?” A pause, in part so that James could breathe and in part so that Michael himself could. His heart was thumping against his ribs, as he lay there with fingers buried in James’s body and made James unravel bit by bit for him, hands twisted in sheets and small cries spilling from that mouth. “Too much? You did ask me for more. But I can stop. We can stop.”  
  
“Don’t,” James panted, lifting his head a few inches from the pillow to find Michael’s eyes, “don’t you fucking dare. I want you. Come here.”  
  
“Not yet.” All those muscles had tensed around his hand with the inundation of bliss; he could’ve made James come for him, on his hand, but he wanted—needed—to be inside, to feel the explosion when it came. And he needed James to relax again before that’d be possible.  
  
He said, “Breathe, for me,” and twisted fingers, avoiding that spot for the time being, only focused on opening that entrance, preparing James for himself. “You want me inside you, don’t you, love? You want to feel me, filling you up, ruining you…”  
  
James moaned, pleading and wordless, and lifted hips into his hand. Slick and stretched and wanting; as ready as possible, then, and Michael knelt between his spread legs, nudging knees even wider. Said, quietly, “I love you,” and saw the smile when James’s lips shaped the words in reply.  
  
Even with all the lotion and the preparation, James was tight around him; Michael pushed in slowly, inch by inch, and heard the gasp as the head slid fully in. He stopped, though he was afraid he might actually erupt on the spot if he waited too long. So good, so hot and wet, enveloping his cock; but he couldn’t, not if James was in pain. “James?”  
  
“That…feels…very large?” James swallowed, blinking rapidly. A hint of wetness reflected sunlight at the tangle of long eyelashes; Michael bit back self-directed imprecations, shifted weight, lifted a hand to brush the teardrop away. “Tell me if you want to stop.”  
  
“No. I think…I like it. It’s just…you’re a lot bigger than your fingers, or my fingers…I feel…I don’t know how I feel.” James turned his head, breathed a kiss into Michael’s palm. “Like being opened up, by you. It doesn’t hurt exactly…maybe for a second…but go on.”  
  
“If you’re sure.”  
  
“Completely sure.” James lay there framed by pillows and smiled at him, all dark hair and jewel-blue eyes and exotic-spice freckles: rare and priceless, Michael thought. Artwork. An idol, meant to be worshipped in opulent decadent sensual rites of adoration.  
  
His cock twitched, a rush of blood that began deep down in his body, in his groin, at the base of his spine. He could spend all his life worshipping James. He could see that.  
  
“Mmm,” James commented, obviously having felt the twitch, and stretched beneath him, cat-like, wriggling and happy and exquisitely despoiled, flushed cheeks and smoky eyes and seductive languor. “Do that again. More.”  
  
“More?” And he wanted to laugh, all at once: joy bubbling up through his bones. Sunshine and elation and cheekily imperious blue eyes. And he was so in love he wanted to shout the words from rooftops. To dance with James in the rain, and to fuck James until, as promised, James climaxed screaming his name.  
  
He leaned down and murmured, purposefully low, “You’re not the one giving orders in bed, James,” and blue eyes turned even darker, washed through with waves of need. “I told you I’d leave you filthy. Dirty. Wet with me. _Mine_. And you’re not a virgin anymore, are you? You belong to me.”  
  
A sound that might’ve begun as his name but ended as a desperate whimper; Michael grinned. Found one graceful leg—god, he loved those legs, so startlingly long for someone that height, and all muscle, luscious paradox of football-toned power and yoga-trained flexibility—and then the other, and lifted them to his shoulders. Paused, letting the position sink in.  
  
And then he moved. More. As requested. All the way in.  
  
James gasped his name, hips snapping up; but it was a movement of welcome, not a struggle to get away, and Michael pulled back and thrust again, harder this time, angle a hairsbreadth different, and the time after he knew he’d hit the exact spot because James moaned, shuddering, clenching around his cock, all the oceans of those eyes gone hazy and unfocused, lost in electric bliss.  
  
And that sight, the feeling of James tightening around him, pulled him right to the brink; he wasn’t going to come until James did, he _wasn’t_ , so he yanked James’s hips hard against his, slammed forward one more time—heard James scream, god, James _was_ a screamer in bed, uninhibited and noisy and glorious—and growled, “ _Mine_ ,” and felt James fall apart around him, cock pulsing untouched, coming on Michael’s length inside his body and Michael’s hands on his hips and Michael’s voice, spurts of white splashing over all the freckles; and Michael’s whole world went white-hot as the supernova hit, as he felt _himself_ erupting inside James.  
  
He collapsed atop James in the aftermath because he couldn’t hold himself up. Managed to gasp, “Sorry—heavy—” and curling dark hair whispered along his cheek as James shook his head. He thought about moving; had no energy left, and those long legs had somehow slid to his waist and wrapped themselves around him.  
  
He buried his face in all that hair, sweat and exertion and apple shampoo and James, and breathed, in and out, and they held each other, in the sunlight.  
  
Eventually awareness reasserted itself, in the shape of his cock softening and slipping in James’s body, slick with lotion and dripping orgasm; the length rubbed against no-longer-virgin muscles, and James made a sound, and hid his face in Michael’s neck.  
  
Michael’s heart turned over. “Shh. James—don’t move—are you hurt? Does this hurt you?”  
  
A headshake, but James didn’t look up, trembling. The sunbeam ducked behind a cloud, cold.  
  
“Okay,” Michael breathed, “okay, I’m going to move, all right, I want to look at you, you don’t have to talk but please tell me if I hurt you,” and lifted himself out and away as gingerly as he could. A trickle of white followed, spilling over pale thighs and crumpled bedsheets. James tried to reach for him; Michael took his hands and kissed them, gently. “I love you. Stay still, for me?”  
  
“I love you.” Steadier, now; that had to be good. And James was smiling a little, when Michael met his eyes. “I’m okay. That was…intense, is what that was. Um. Yours, you said.”  
  
“I did. If you, y’know…want to be.” He coaxed legs more apart, checking, afraid. James sounded better, but James wouldn’t necessarily know. “I’d like that. Are you sore?” No blood, no tearing that he could find; pink swollen muscle, puffy and exhausted and wet with the remnants of himself, yes, but James didn’t flinch at the touch, only sighed softly and let himself be explored.  
  
“A bit, maybe…not bad…all of it, I mean. Good.” James pushed himself up on both elbows. The sunbeam ventured back out and made a halo over his hair. The sunbeam’d got it exactly, Michael thought: James made a wonderfully fallen angel, fantastical and sinful and debauched at his hands. He said, moving back up so they were face to face, “Was it?”  
  
“Yes.” James tipped his head to one side, smiling, beckoning. “And yes. Yours. Nice. Kiss me.”  
  
“So demanding,” Michael murmured, “for a virgin,” and did as requested, while James laughed. Michael wanted to kiss him, to taste that laughter, forever.  
  
“Not a virgin anymore. And that was a fucking _brilliant_ first time. Not sure you can top that one.”  
  
“Oh…I’ll think of something…” Something that didn’t involve James being drugged and unconscious the previous night. He couldn’t completely regret the turn of events—they’d ended up here—but he could ensure that those events never happened again. And he would. “…shower? Breakfast in bed? I can cook for us.”  
  
“I can help.” James nudged his calf with a foot, teasing. “Not _that_ sore. Unless you just want to keep me in bed all day, in which case yes, absolutely. Michael?”  
  
“Hmm?” He put his leg over the mischievous foot. James blinked, let himself be pinned to the bed, didn’t protest. Michael filed this away for future investigation. “Are you—”  
  
“I’m wonderful, and so’re you. And that was my point. I woke up with a headache, right?”  
  
“You—”  
  
“Gone. Totally. You’re miraculous. Or maybe _this_ is miraculous. Anyway, I feel spectacular.”  
  
Michael stared at James’s hand fondling his cock, decided that introducing James to the joys of gay sex might in fact result in his own demise via orgasmic exhaustion and that he’d not mind in the least, and said, “You are. Spectacular,” because that was about all he could manage with all the blood in his body headed that direction.  
  
James grinned. “Shower sex?”  
  
“Shouldn’t you be…tired? After…y’know…everything…that’s not a no…I love you.”  
  
“Yes,” James said cheerfully, “but I want my mouth on you. I can tie cherry stems in a knot with my tongue, you realize, and I’m actually sober this time. I love you. Can I suck your cock, in the shower?”  
  
“Christ,” Michael said. “Yes. I mean yes to everything, all of that, I mean I’m going to put you on your knees in the shower and keep you there while I fuck that mouth, James, is that what you’re asking for?”  
  
James kissed him again, and said, “I’m asking for you.” Michael wound a hand into his hair, held him there, breaths mingling, and whispered, “You have me,” and the smile in blue eyes answered, I know.


End file.
